BERLIN (Own report) – In the midst of a phase of the expansion of the EU’s military policy relations with several East and Southeast Asian countries, German Chancellor Angela Merkel will visit Japan. Merkel will arrive March 8 in the Japanese capital, reciprocating Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s visit to Germany last year. Tokyo seeks to intensify its cooperation with EU countries – also militarily – to enhance its position in territorial conflicts with Beijing. At the same time, the United States is focusing, to a growing extent, its global policy efforts on eastern Asia and the Pacific Basin. Shortly before Merkel is to visit Japan, a study published by the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP) points out that the interests of several EU countries would be “massively affected should conflicts escalate in this region.” These conflicts are mostly about territorial sovereignty over islands and groups of islands, which recently have become accentuated. SWP proposed that the EU “discuss” what position to take “in case of conflict.”

If you haven’t figured out the Germany through its Troika proxy is what runs the show in Europe, then this should suffice:

As we noted earlier today, there was some confusion over the plight of the Greek reform proposal document, which initially was said to have been delayed until today, only for the Troika, pardon, Institutions, to flip around and say they had actually received it before midnight on Monday. How could the two be possible? Courtesy of Yannis Koutsomitis, who had the simple but profound idea of looking at the properties tab in the leaked Varoufakis draft of the agreed to proposals, we now know.

As it turns out, the reason why not only the Troika received an agreed to version of the Greek reform proposals “before midnight on Monday”, but rushed these through with a favorable agreement today, is that, drumroll, the European Commission drafted the entire letter!Continue reading →

Germany removes the last restraints on its use of the armed forces, while its defense minister declares that there will be “no taboos”.

The year 1993 pivotal for the German military. Germany established its armed forces in 1956, but memories of two world wars meant that they were restricted to defensive operations within nato territory.

In 1991, this slowly began to change. Thirty German soldiers deployed in Baghdad, Iraq, to help with airlift operations. The same year, 150 medics were sent with a United Nations mission to Cambodia.

The first substantial foreign mission came in 1993, with over 2,000 military personnel deploying to Somalia as UN peacekeepers. The same year, German soldiers joined in aerial operations over Yugoslavia.

The world had no problems with these operations. In fact, the UN and United States desperately wanted the German army to do more, but to many Germans, this was too much. Germany’s main left-wing party, the Social Democratic Party (spd), and the free market Free Democratic Party (fdp) complained to the German Constitutional Court that these deployments violated Germany’s Basic Law—its constitution. Continue reading →

KIEV/BELGRADE/BERLIN (Own report) – A year after Berlin helped instigate the putsch in Ukraine, new information is coming to light about the February 20, 2014 Kiev Massacre. That bloodbath, of more than 50 people killed, accelerated the overthrow of President Viktor Yanukovych and was also used – even in Germany – to justify the putsch. As has now been confirmed by witnesses, armed demonstrators were the first to open fire on police, and only then, did repressive forces return fire, when they were caught in a hail of bullets while retreating. If this proves to be true, it could not have been a government-planned massacre. Furthermore, evidence indicates that also the snipers, who had shot to kill, were on the side of the government’s opponents. Today, the responsibility for that bloodbath is as unsolved as that for the deaths of more than 40 Kosovo Albanians in Račak in mid-January 1999, which the West labeled a mass execution – in spite of all contradicting evidence. Račak served as a decisive justification for the military aggression on Yugoslavia. The political and media establishments’ other forgeries and lies preceding and during the war on Yugoslavia demonstrate that manipulations, such as the ones we are currently seeing in the Ukraine conflict, are nothing new. They are rather consistent props in the German establishment’s standard repertoire for escalating conflicts.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — The power balance in the European Union has been tipped in favour of Germany, and is likely to collapse the 28-member economic bloc in the long run, a Polish presidential candidate told Sputnik news agency on Tuesday. Continue reading →

Consisting of representatives of the International Monetary Found (IMF), the European Central Bank (ECB) and the European Commission, the Troika “was supposed to become an auxiliary government and audit court with permanent rights of intervention”. But, Martens writes, the name “Troika” and possibly even the composition of the control group will be changed. Even European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker is said to be in favor, as the EU did not like the IMF’s involvement in its affairs, and the ECB “was never convinced of its own role” in the Troika.

It was known a lot of the countries allowed into the EU didn’t meet the requirements to begin with, but were intentionally let in to fulfill the end goal: Break nations in half and create vassal states in subservience to a resurgent German hegemon through bailouts from it’s Troika proxy that require giving up national sovereignty in exchange.

At best, this is a band-aid on a 5 inch laceration wound for the Greeks and the situation as a whole. As the article states, the leaders of Greece did a complete 180 on their promises to the Greek people and they now have a little explaining to do. At the end of the day, and as inconceivable as it is, all roads on the European continent lead back to Berlin and it’s Fourth Reich via the Troika.

The package was presented as a deal done by the eurozone countries together, but there has been little doubt throughout the tense and at times angry negotiations that it was Germany which pulled the strings.

Having refused to grant Greece’s request of six months’ grace on its loans and a rapid rolling back of austerity measures, Germany eventually accepted the belated compromise of a four-month extension.

That means Greece will now not run out of money next month and allows the new government in Athens space to continue negotiating with its creditors for a relaxation of the terms of its debt. Continue reading →

The Greek proposal “doesn’t meet the criteria agreed upon in the Eurogroup on Monday,” German Finance Ministry spokesman Martin Jaeger said in an e-mailed statement. “In truth, it aims at bridge financing without meeting the requirements” of the rescue program. European Commission Spokesman Margaritis Schinas moments earlier had said the Greek letter could be the basis for a “reasonable compromise.”

With the Greek state and its banks shut out of financial markets and dependent on emergency aid to stay afloat, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is retreating from his pledges to end austerity as the country’s creditors tighten the financial vise. While he’s not yet gone far enough to satisfy Germany, Greek bonds held on to earlier gains as a spokeswoman said Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble still plans to meet his euro-region counterparts in Brussels on Friday.

BERLIN/NIENBURG AN DER WESER (Own report) – The German Red Cross (DRK) and the German Bundeswehr have entered an unprecedented cooperation agreement. The so-called Future Pact foresees the direct integration of the DRK into the “Civil-Military Cooperation Center” of the German military located in Nienburg in Lower Saxony. The relief organization will also maintain a “permanent liaison office” and participate both in the planning and execution of combat operations. Back in 2003, the DRK explicitly committed itself to “cooperate” in military missions. In 2008, a federal law stipulated that the primary “task” of the relief organization was to “support the Bundeswehr’s medical service.” Since 2009, the DRK has maintained its own “representative for civil-military cooperation.” Since last year, this cooperation has been exercised within the framework of the “Joint Cooperation” maneuvers, which are explicitly aimed at the implementation of the “network” of the military and relief organizations, to be applied in foreign missions in civil war regions.

Nuclear power is out in Germany, but could shale gas soon be included in the historic German energiewende?

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Up until now, opposition to hydraulic fracturing has also been very strong. But the German government is flirting with the idea of allowing oil and gas drillers to begin fracking. There has been a de facto moratorium on fracking in place for several years, but a new proposal, if passed, could open up the country to drilling by the end of the decade. Under the proposal an expert panel of six government officials would be granted authority to approve fracking at depths greater than 3,000 meters below the surface. Continue reading →

If Greece is forced out of the euro in acrimonious circumstances – a 50/50 risk given the continued refusal of the creditor core to acknowledge their own guilt and strategic errors – the country will not only default on its EMU rescue packages, but also on its “Target2″ liabilities to the European Central Bank.

In normal times, Target2 adjustments are routine and self-correcting. They occur automatically as money is shifted around the currency bloc. The US Federal Reserve has a similar internal system to square books across regions. They turn nuclear if monetary union breaks up.

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A Greek default – unavoidable in a Grexit scenario – would crystallize these losses. The German people would discover instantly that a large sum of money committed without their knowledge and without a vote in the Bundestag had vanished.

Athens and Moscow teaming up could spell geopolitical disaster for Europe.

The ushering of Alexis Tsipras into the office of Prime Minister of the Hellenic Republic in late January 2015 represents a major change in Europe’s geopolitics. Tsipras and his left-wing Syriza party rode to power on a wave of acute voter dissatisfaction caused by the country’s severe economic downturn starting in 2009. Many Greeks believe this situation was rooted in austerity and reforms imposed by Brussels’ unelected bureaucrats taking orders from Berlin. There is now a new geopolitics of debt that encompasses relations within the European Union (EU), Europe’s relations with Russia and to a lesser extent, China. For the United States, the new geopolitical terrain only complicates an already complicated Eurasian political arena.

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The bailout was engineered under the auspices of the Troika, which is the EU, European Central Bank (ECB) and International Monetary Fund. The massive injection of loans kept Greece from defaulting on its debt and helped Greece remain in the Eurozone. It also helped stabilize acute financial-market turmoil that threatened to spread to Spain, Italy and France. Continue reading →

Germans make great pianos—the finest, actually, in my opinion. The name Steinway has been synonymous with excellence in piano construction for over a century and a half, starting with a German-born piano maker living in New York. When his son opened a plant in Hamburg, Germany, it wasn’t long before many regarded the Hamburg instruments as superior to those manufactured in the original New York factory.

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German craftsmen have earned a reputation for excellence for more than just pianos. Whether it’s kitchen knives or convertibles, power tools or pistols, the “Made in Germany” mark is a testament to any product’s superiority. Olympic competitors seek German-made rowing shells; rock superstars look for German-made guitar amplifiers. Germany’s reputation in the auto industry is unmatched in both quantity and quality; the nation is the world’s third-largest car producer. German sports sedans outperform their peers; its luxury cars outclass their competition.

German workers have refined the ability to assimilate great innovations of other nations and improve upon them. Germany is also known for its creative geniuses—its composers, poets and scientists.

Little wonder, then, that Germany is the economic powerhouse of Europe and the most stable economy in the Western world. Continue reading →